Barkerville’s Theatre Royal, Part 2: 1900 - 1958

royalty and Charles was an appointed Master of the Revels for the Crown.

Of course, other styles of entertainment were also of great popularity with the masses. These styles included dramas and melodramas with farcical components (referred to collectively as farces), pantomimes, ballet, operas, operettas, and comedic operas (such as Gilbert and Sullivan, active 1871-1896), and the growing popularity of British Music Hall and its American counterpart known as Vaudeville.

While the Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association no doubt held amongst their numbers some thespians capable of deftly carrying the classics to a Cariboo audience with dignity and passion (and aspired to do so, according to the Cariboo Sentinel in late 1869), their popularity stemmed primarily from the performance of farce, opera, and additional comedic songs, satirical songs, tragi-comic songs, hymns, and ballads.

This essay continues and elaborates upon our November 2022 issue which included Barkerville’s Theatre Royal Part 1: 18641900. Throughout Part 1, the social and cultural inspirations that triggered the formation of the Cariboo Literary Institute’s Glee Club in (most likely) 1864, which later developed into the Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association in 1865, were discussed.

As we turn our focus now to the journey of Barkerville’s Theatre Royal in the early twentieth century, it is important to once again examine other influences during the latter half of the nineteenth century to better comprehend some of the cultural changes and entertainment trends of the time.

A significant influence of the era was legitimate patent theatre (serious drama and realism; the classics) which required a royal licence to perform and was reverently respected in the colony of British Columbia as demonstrated by The Keans’ tour to Victoria during December of 1864. The Keans were British performance

Interestingly, though decades had passed since the CADA’s heyday, a 1920s Barkerville schoolteacher was informed of their work by locals and noted their repute in his memoir: “On special occasions guests gathered in formal dress … and afterwards they went on to the Theatre Royal where either the drama club put on a serious play or the parts were enacted by imported talent.” The imported talent refers to a number of professional touring companies who performed in the Theatre Royal in the early 1870s. Meanwhile, it is apparent that the CADA were remembered locally as having performed legitimate theatre.

IIndeed, the very fact that the CADA named their venue the Theatre Royal, after legitimate patent theatres, indicates that whether performing farce, drama or melodrama, they took their role and contribution to gold rush society seriously, amateur or not.

Regarding Music Hall, Vaudeville, and Cinema

British Music Hall became a formal style in the mid-to-late 1850s within the walls of Charles Morton’s New Canterbury Hall in South London. He is responsible for making the old-time song and supper public houses gender-inclusive and available to women as well as men.

Morton’s endeavours marked the transition of the centuries-old variety taproom concert (a contemporary comparison would be a local ‘coffeehouse’ open mic event) from the informal saloon venues and public houses onto the formal and saleable stage.

Morton is, in fact, credited with coining the term “music hall,” and his efforts as an impresario, theatre producer and manager had an extraordinary influence on global theatre and the later development of American Vaudeville in the 1890s. Twice he was fined in the mid-1850s under the Theatre Act of 1843 for presenting “legitimate theatre” selections during variety performances without the licence to do so. Under Morton’s guidance, select scenes and famous soliloquies from reputable classics were being interspersed between the musical entertainment and variety acts. These ‘patent theatre’ fines were well documented and in turn became excellent publicity serving to spur the popularity of the music hall variety entertainment.

While similar to British Music Hall, Vaudeville would find its footing in North America throughout the latter quarter of the nineteenth century. Distinguishable from the former for its pronounced lack of drama, social commentary and satire, Vaudeville tended to be a light farcical entertainment consisting of ten to fifteen unrelated acts, but this was by no means a steadfast rule. The defining absurdist element of “farce” could often be explained by the utter lack of association between the variety of acts, paired with an emphasis on comedic relief. Of particular influence to the burgeoning art form were the farcical and melodramatic elements of Parisian Boulevard Theatre, the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte-inspired elements of stock characters, slapstick humour, and physical/circus theatre in Pantomime, as well as Vaux-de-Vire (satirical lyrics sung to popular airs) from the Valde-Vire region of Normandy, France.

Vaudeville’s influence in Western Culture and the combined curation of unrelated entertain- ment acts which included magicians, jugglers, animal acts, comedians, song and dance all presented under one marquee, inspired early cinema and continues to influence pop culture today. The mid-1970s to early 1980s, The Muppet Show, was a reimagining of turn-of-thecentury American Vaudeville for television, and the ubiquitous and decade’s-old Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer ‘bumper clip’ of Leo, the roaring lion, also pays homage.

Both British Music Hall and Vaudeville are derived from a resistance to regulatory bodies defining and licensing legitimate theatre, but where British Music Hall still celebrated and incorporated components of satire, “legitimate theatre” plays, and drama, Vaudeville tended to root itself more in escapism, comedy, and spectacle. Where British Music Hall began to gain traction in the mid-1850s and evolved into an influential, affluent, and dominant form of entertainment by the 1870s and 1880s, Vaudeville’s peak came over two decades later.

By 1910, after six decades -a life time- of influence, British Music Hall began to dwindle in its saleable appeal. While the variety taproom concert that inspired the style has always remained vibrant in the social zeitgeist in one form or another (certainly with mid-century musical theatre composers), music hall and its venues were repurposed for a brief resurgence of more monumental, elaborate productions and historic reenactments. Many of these venues were also being transitioned into silent film cinemas, as the new moving picture medium of entertainment had been growing in popularity since its unveiling to the world in 1895. Vaudeville, nonetheless, remained popular into the 1930s in America and celebrated a success both parallel to and symbiotic of early cinema. Some of its greatest legacies include increasing the popularity of and maintaining the legacy of tap dance, cabaret, sketch comedy, and comedic songs. As silent films began to transition into talkies during the mid-to-late 1920s with the technological evolution of synchronized sound, various components of Vaudeville soon found their way to the (literal) silver screen and stage performers began moonlighting on screen. Regarding the influence of both legitimate theatre and music hall on the Cariboo Amateur Dramatic Association’s work between 1865 and 1875, it is identifiable in the archival record that the tradition of taproom concert and saloon entertainment was alive and well in the community’s numerous saloons as well as on the stage. Not coincidentally, the traditional meaning of saloon was a house of popular entertainment.

One of the CADA’s core members, Miss Florence Wilson, had a brother in her native London, England, who managed two separate variety entertainment venues. It is possible, then, that this family connection might have had some influence on the Cariboo association’s work, but also of influence was their recorded desire to perform legitimate classical repertoire. After all, the CADA were remembered for their ‘serious plays’ in the early twentieth century which strongly suggests that at least some serious work was indeed being presented by the association.

In the late 1860s, the Cariboo Sentinel lamented that while the CADA possessed among their numbers some members with the training, skill, and talent required to produce traditional works (designated as legitimate repertoire), that the association lacked the finances required to acquire the necessary costuming and sets considered appropriate to honour them.

The CADA, between 1865 and 1870, regularly performed farcical plays followed by variety songs in their performances. Sometimes they performed two one-act farces with variety songs in between, and sometimes they performed operas with local musicians forming the orchestra. As aforementioned, at other times they were remembered to have performed serious works (a great deal of grounded realism can certainly lend to the comedy of farce). Their benefits and concert evenings explored the realm of variety entertainment in more breadth, and it would have likely been during these latter performances that the influence of the taproom concert turned Music Hall was most prominently displayed.

A Changing Economy and Changing World

The Barkerville Theatre Royal as we know it today is actually the third structure to hold the designation. This third structure acutely resembles the second, and most historically significant, theatre. This second venue was constructed post-conflagration in late 1868 and completed in early 1869. It was both a theatre and community hall and held residence on the second storey of the Williams Creek Fire Brigade Engine House.

This joint purpose building was a unique and symbiotic frontier arrangement representing community compromise, owing to the ingenuity of one Edward Howman who proposed the union to the benefit of both parties. The resulting structure, known ubiquitously as the Theatre Royal, was a symbolic demonstration (through the dual use of the edifice) of different forms of public service housed in one magnificent structure. Outwardly opulent and inwardly utilitarian, it was eventually adorned with a sounding belfry for a fire alarm, following the late arrival of a chapel bell on July 7th, 1871.

The space was always intended to serve as both a theatrical house and a community hall, and its first celebratory ball was held a full three weeks prior to its completion by the William’s Creek Fire Brigade during Christmas of 1868. The CADA’s official opening performance of their new venue would take place on January 16th, 1869. The association continued performing steadily from 1869 through 1870, but alas, their performances dwindled as key members left the Cariboo for either other ventures or the siren call of family and home.

By this time, Barkerville’s first rush was also dwindling which created complications for the association. The region had, only a few years earlier, been occupied by a fluctuating 4,000 to 6,000 settler-pioneers and prospectors. Although, a contradictory oral report, supposedly made by then librarian and later Gold Commissioner, John Bowron, suggested (this was likely misinterpreted by the report’s recipient who relayed this information to historian, Isabel Bescoby, in the early 1930s) that there were as many as 10,000 persons collected along William’s Creek in 1864.

Either way, those days of excitement and mayhem passed, and what had been Old (pre-fire) Barkerville was now known as New (post-fire) Barkerville. The new version of the community was seeing miners leave for prospects northwest in the Omineca, or southeast into the silver and gold mines of the north central United States. Despite the exodus, many families that had made their homes and lives in Barkerville steadfastly held to their new roots. This included the prominent Chinese community in Barkerville which would see a significant surge of growth over the next two decades. Hotels, saloons, government institutions, and mercantile shops still operated. Large mining companies now dominated, but the small independent and hydraulic operations still made pay. Barkerville wasn’t the frenzied, sleepless camp that it had been in late 1862 after the Barker Company’s August 17th payload discovery at 52 feet. Nor was it the hastily erected “Boom Town” comprising both itself and Cameronton that had been haphazardly laid-out despite best intentions in a mixture of frontier convenience and necessity over the next two years. It also wasn’t the growing and thriving community and economic centre it had become and maintained during the mid-sixties prior to the town-razing fire of September 16th, 1868. Barkerville was now an actual town. The new theatre had cost a small fortune to construct and the CADA struggled financially to manage the misfortune of regional economic decline paired with an increasing want of skilled members. Between 1869 and 1872, professional touring companies (Lafont and Wards, Martin the Wizard, a Chinese Variety Troupe, and the McGinely Family Variety Troupe) used the Theatre Royal as a receiving destination from which to entertain for extended residencies. While they did, annual spring freshets, or floods, gradually destroyed the first storey and engine hall portion of the theatre. A number of contractors throughout the 1870s, beginning in 1872 and continuing through the decade, were commissioned to saw-off and remove the bottom storey of the structure and to restabilize the foundation of the CADA’s auditorium space. A lawsuit in the latter half of the decade was noted by Judge Eli Harrison regarding ownership and responsibility for the reparations to the structure. What had begun as the building’s obvious second storey, in a short manner of only three years, had begun its transition of equipoise into a street level main storey. Because of this, the theatre auditorium was also being used as a hall for fire brigade meetings and other community events. It was the preferred venue for community dances and celebratory balls, church institute concerts, and was a rentable venue for lecture engagements. The CADA’s performances, however, ceased for nearly three years between 1873 and 1875. From that point onward, the amateurs performed intermittently and inconsistently with extended durations between performances.

The Poet Scout

In 1878, a bona fide American celebrity took temporary residence in Barkerville after convalescing from a significant stage accident. He had been shot in the leg while performing an historical reenactment with Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody.

Captain Jack Crawford, known also as “The Poet Scout” and the “Original Boy Scout,” was a former American army scout, a poet, an actor, and was also a fellow performer and associate of Wild Bill Hickock. Known for performing cavalry reenactments with Buffalo Bill, for his skill with a six-shooter, and lauded as being a masterful storyteller, Crawford also performed melodrama and wrote his own highly popular solo monologue-driven autobiographical show: The Camp, Field, and Trail. Barkerville barber and diarist, Wellington Delaney Moses, noted in his journal that Crawford performed ten (perhaps more) times on the Theatre Royal stage, including at least one benefit to raise funds for the Royal Cariboo Hospital.

While Barkerville truly was very different from the contemporary myth of the American Western Gunslinger and the frontier living of the 1870s and 1880s, partially for British influence, partially for a formidable judicial system, and partially for its mountainous geography,

Capt. Jack Crawford is still one of those select individuals, one of the seeds of truth as it were, that the popular revisionist American myth of twentieth century cinema and literature grew from.

It is in this way, and others, that the Cariboo’s connection to western mythology and society is not quite as removed as is often asserted. In fact, a number of former Barkerville residents would venture south into the Black Hills of South Dakota to take temporary residence in the now (and then) infamous community of Deadwood during the mid-1870s. Perhaps this is where Crawford first learned of Barkerville during his travels? Deadwood, in turn, was relatively recently popularized only two decades ago in a fascinating –albeit gritty and sophisticatedly uncouth– historically-influenced fictional television series spanning three seasons and a 2019 film.

Capt. Jack Crawford was deeply impacted by his stay in the Cariboo and wrote poetry about his experiences along William’s Creek. His tenure on the Theatre Royal stage may well mark the first solo-performer historical show performed in the region (in what has now become a long interpretative and ‘edu-tainment’ legacy of solo-performer biographical plays and discourses performed to expound upon the Cariboo Gold Rush society of the 1860s).

Little else is known regarding the activity of the CADA in the 1880s aside from oral history indicating that the odd performance still took place, such as school concerts and plays. By the early 1890s, the CADA had expanded their scope of volunteer recreation and rebranded as the Cariboo Amateur Dramatic and Athletic Association. It is unclear if amateur dramatics continued in the venue after the turn of the century, but if they did, they were few and far between and would have most likely been neighbourhood events.